Goodbye and thanks Work Party Three

1 July 2015

As I type, work party three will be powering across the Atlantic back to Harris and home. This marks the end of another busy work party season.

Work party three started their trip with some lovely weather – with some particularly tricky turf roof repairs taking place in bright sunshine in week one. Despite being a day late coming on island they were very busy and more than made up for the missed time. The work party were also engaged with dry stone repairs and lots and lots of painting – including the gun dating to the Great War.

Unexpectedly, clearing a drain turned into something of an archaeological exercise so some work party members got a brief taste of archaeology, excavating and doing some drawings. Amongst the usual finds was a very small pony shoe – the last horses were known to have left the islands in the 1830s or 40s so this is a relatively early find for Village Bay. Unless of course, it was bought later as a decoration.

Work party three were abley led by experienced leader Donald Paterson, who made sure they explored as much of Hirta as they could in the brief windows of good weather. A boat trip round Hirta was made even more exciting by the sighting of a vast basking shark and a Minke whale.